Ruby’s Story: ‘I want to go back home but I don’t feel safe there’
When police arrested her dad for repeatedly bashing and raping her, Ruby should have finally felt free. Instead, she was banished from her community.
Today The Australian publishes the last of a three-part series revealing the effects of family violence in remote communities through the life of 21-year-old Ruby, who lived at Yuendumu in the same house for a time as Kumanjayi Walker, shot dead by police in 2019. It’s a confronting story but one that needs to be told.
When police arrested Dean Wilson for repeatedly bashing and raping his daughter Ruby, the teenager should have finally felt free.
Instead, the 17-year-old was forced from her home in Yuendumu by community members who supported the perpetrator and blamed her for having him locked up. “Everybody just kept giving me dirty (looks) and didn’t believe me,” she said.
Ruby – not her real name – told The Australian that when she returned to Yuendumu after providing her police statement in Alice Springs about her father’s abuse, she no longer felt safe moving around the community and had to “stay in the one place”. A close relative even told her that “Dean wants to forgive me” for finally reporting him to the police following months of horrific abuse. “I was thinking, like ‘What do you mean? I don’t get it?’,” she said. “I don’t want him to forgive me. I want him to admit it and say sorry … he should be the one saying sorry to me.”
On Saturday, The Weekend Australian revealed Ruby’s father had bashed and raped her after being released on parole in September 2017 and moving into the Yuendumu home where the teenager lived with her grandparents.
After Ruby endured four months of hell, Wilson was finally arrested in January 2018 after a particularly vicious beating and attempted rape that left his daughter limping and exhibiting more than 50 separate injuries.
When Ruby’s aunt took her to the medical clinic, police were notified and Wilson was arrested.
Almost two years later, Ruby testified against her father in the Northern Territory Supreme Court at Alice Springs.
Following the five-day trial in November 2019, the jury found Wilson guilty on all six counts of physically and sexually assaulting her and attempting to rape her at various locations in Yuendumu and Alice Springs.
In her victim impact statement from January 2020 – two years after his arrest – Ruby said she felt “sad and lost and angry all the time”.
In May 2020, judge Jenny Blokland sentenced Wilson to 18 years in prison.
Ruby in May told The Australian her father’s abuse has left her feeling lost, lonely and worthless. “He’s the one who is supposed to protect me and everything,” she said. “He’s supposed to protect me from people like that. But you can’t always trust people, even if they’re your real family.”
After the trial, Ruby felt abandoned and unsupported at Yuendumu. She also feared for her safety at the remote outback community, 330km northwest of Alice Springs, after her aunt was attacked with an axe in retaliation for giving evidence at her father’s trial.
“I really want to go back home but, at the same time, I don’t feel safe there,” she said.
It’s a common story. In June, an NT Supreme Court judge said Indigenous sexual assault victims were being banished from their communities as punishment for reporting abuse. Justice Blokland, who presided over Wilson’s trial, made the remarks during the sentencing hearing in a separate sexual assault case.
She said the victim in that case had, like Ruby, been forced to leave the remote community where she had grown up. “We may be witnessing the emergence of a trend which sees victims of sexual assault being incidentally punished in their home communities through a form of banishment,” she said. “I feel it is something community leaders need to seriously reflect on.”
After Wilson’s arrest, Ruby met her boyfriend, whose father is from Yuendumu, and gave birth to their son in November 2020.
“Ever since I had my baby, I was happy but I couldn’t just brush off my memories, they’re still haunting me,” she said. “I tried to distract myself with things and I got into weed really bad back home.
“It was just sometimes it would calm me down and make me forget things but I tried to leave that.”
Before long, Ruby’s relationship with her boyfriend became volatile. Despite this, the young couple took their baby and moved to far north Queensland, where Ruby’s boyfriend had grown up, in search of a new beginning and better life. Yet their trip from the Red Centre to the tropical north was turbulent.
When they reached Mount Isa in early June, both were arrested for fighting. In October, following months of volatility, Ruby was charged with one count of obstructing a police officer and one count of seriously assaulting a public officer. In November, she was charged with two counts of failing to appear in court. On December 10, she was arrested and taken into custody.
“I wasn’t in my right mind cos I’m still going through this (trauma),” she said. “That just put me back to that part where everything happened to me and I tried defending myself but then the police wouldn’t listen to my side of the (story) and still locked me up.”
The day Ruby was arrested, her boyfriend was charged with possessing drug utensils. A few days later, he pleaded guilty in the Mareeba Magistrates Court to eight driving and drug-related offences, spanning a period from April to December 2021.
The 22-year-old had convictions recorded, his driver’s licence disqualified and drug utensils seized. He also copped $2500 in fines which, the court has since heard, he was unable or unwilling to pay.
Meanwhile, Ruby remained in custody for four months before her matters were dealt with in the Mareeba Magistrates Court in March. Represented by criminal lawyer Jaci Soles from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, she pleaded guilty.
On March 25, magistrate Thomas Braes sentenced her to 12 months in prison for obstructing a police officer and 12 months in prison for seriously assaulting a public officer. Noting that she had already spent 105 days in custody, he immediately released her on 18 months’ parole.
As a part of parole conditions, she was ordered to submit to a psychological or psychiatric evaluation. Ruby told The Australian she was diagnosed with PTSD and depression as a result of her father’s abuse.
“They think I can’t control my mental issues,” she said.
A doctor prescribed antidepressants for her.
“They’re not helping,” she said. “It just gives me headaches.”
Ruby has seen her son only a handful of times since being released from prison but cherishes the weekly hour-long visits.
“First, he was shy but then he started remembering us,” she said.
“On Wednesday, I called out his name … and he turned around and crawled to me.”
During her last visit, he fell asleep in her lap.
Every week, when Ruby sees him, she notices how much the 18-month-old has grown.
He recently took his first steps and Ruby suspects he will soon be stringing sentences together.
She said being separated from him was “really hard” but he seemed to be safe, happy, well cared for and surrounded by other kids.
She said he looked healthy, was eating a lot and not suffering from any health issues.
Her boyfriend has been trying to get a job.
After growing up fatherless, Ruby wants to keep the family unit intact at all costs.
The 21-year-old said she felt unwelcome where she was staying with her boyfriend’s aunt but had nowhere else to go. “It just feels like everyone is blaming me for everything,” she said.
“I’ve got so many emotions running through me every day and I always feel like I’m not worth anything.
“Everything just puts me down.
“It’s just my life’s been hard and still is hard.”
Ruby – who does not have a phone, car, job, family, friends or support in far north Queensland – feels adrift.
“It’s been lonely,” she said. “I just feel lost all the time and I miss my family. I just want a home to stay in and a good family.”
Ruby also wants a job, “something easy to start with” but eventually in childcare so she can be reunited with her son.
“I miss him so much,” she said.
“Firstly I really want a job and a house to live in with him.
“I’ve never had my own place and even when living with family, I’ve never had my own room.”
The young woman, who has changed her surname since her father’s trial, still entertains returning to the Territory to be closer to kin but says staying in Queensland would “probably be better”.
And even if she felt safe to return to Yuendumu, she can’t go back. “I feel like people there are too judgmental,” she said.
“I can’t face those memories.
“It’s hard to forget what happened to me.
“I just want a happy life and wanna be free.”
